While Vimeo is a great deal smaller than YouTube (and really, who isn't?), there is a growing and thriving community of users there. But one group that has long been shut out of the Vimeo experience is businesses and brands. This week, the company announced the creation of a new type of member account - Vimeo Pro. Vimeo Pro is intended for businesses, and offers such entities many benefits and features not available with traditional Vimeo accounts.

What is Vimeo Pro?

Vimeo Pro is a new standalone service for business accounts--the core Vimeo product won't be connected at all. The company blog says that it's a service that is "invisible to the Vimeo.com world."

Instead, Vimeo believes that most businesses don't really even want to have a presence on Vimeo, but rather they prefer to use the account as a means to embed their clips throughout the web.

Vimeo Pro costs $199 per year, and that buys your business 50GB of video upload space and up to 250,000 embedded video plays.

They appear very confident that Vimeo Pro's prices are attractive. From the company blog:

This package is literally the lowest possible price we could offer in order to make this account as affordable as possible for the small business community. We understand this model is a change to our current offering compared to Vimeo Plus, but if you compare this package to any other video hosting solution for business, these numbers are a steal. Seriously, check around.

What Are The Benefits & Features of Vimeo Pro?

There are many attractive features of Vimeo Pro... selling points, if you will. Here are just a few:

Portfolios - Portfolios are complete standalone video portfolio websites where businesses can show off their videos. It's completely free of Vimeo branding, and allows companies to shine all on their own.

Video Review Pages - A way to share videos with clients while they're in development. This sounds a bit like YouTube's Unlisted Videos, but with the added security of password protection options.

Brandable Video Player - Businesses can take the Vimeo player and put their own branding and logo on it. This is a huge feature for businesses, and will help sway a lot of companies to give Pro a serious look.

Support for 3rd Party Video Players - Vimeo Pro will even support 3rd party video players, just in case your business already has a player you like or Vimeo's player doesn't quite do what you want it to.

Other Features - There's also support for HD, a stats package, and much more.

Wrap-Up

Don't confuse Vimeo Pro for Vimeo Plus. One is for businesses and the other for individuals. Until now, Vimeo has had a fairly strict policy against commercial videos. Vimeo Pro was created in response to consumer requests and a rapidly changing video marketplace, to provide a way for brands and small businesses to take advantage of the platform.

It's a great move, and I think a ton of businesses will sign up. Vimeo has a fantastic reputation. Most of their videos are top-quality work by artistic professionals--there's very little of that "cat videos reputation" that YouTube carries around its neck. And the price point means is low enough that it won't be prohibitive for most brands and commercial entities.

What do you think? Is Vimeo Pro offering enough bang for the buck to get you interested?

About the Author - Jeremy Scott

Jeremy Scott is the founder of The Viral Orchard, an Internet marketing firm offering content writing and development services, viral marketing consulting, and SEO services. Jeremy writes constantly, loves online video, and enjoys helping small businesses succeed in any way he can. View All Posts By - Jeremy Scott

What do you think? ▼

http://www.savebusinesstime.com/ Espree Devora

I'm thinking about getting Vimeo Pro, but I am just not convinced it's worth it. I'm developing a channel on YouTube and counting on YT SEO power and it doesn't seem Vimeo has that but in other areas I've read it's great to drive people to my website so I just don't know. I would be using both in tandem regardless, just not sure in I should use Vimeo as well.

Grant Crowell

I'd like to know if Vimeo Pro has a section for private video content via subscription. The ability to monetize video content itself, either via shopping cart or subscription basis, I think would be valuable to SMEs.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1541411651 Tjapko de Heus

I like Vimeo and I have a small business. So I am interested. I like YouTube because it is the second largest search engine. What's the story with Vimeo concerning SEO? I wonder..